that lay farther north. I looked at the rigid set of Piper’s shoulders, his head slightly bowed, and knew that he was thinking of the same thing.
Each night, back in our own tent, I bent over the Ark paper. By now I knew every word by heart, and needn’t have bothered with the paper itself. But I clutched the page as I ran over the words again and again, as if that fading sheet of parchment was a map that would help guide my visions to the Ark, or to Elsewhere. But all I could find was my own fear, and the tank water rising over New Hobart. I couldn’t make the pieces fit: Elsewhere; the Ark; New Hobart.
“Perhaps the Ark’s there—under New Hobart. Maybe it’s that simple,” Sally said. “And that’s why the Council seized the town—to get at the Ark.”
I shook my head. “No. I was in New Hobart for weeks. If the Ark were there, I would have felt it—places are the thing that I usually feel most clearly.” I’d felt the tank rooms under Wyndham, and the caves and tunnels through the mountain. I’d felt the island. “The Ark isn’t in New Hobart,” I said. When I closed my eyes, I saw it again: the defenselessness of Elsa’s open mouth, the liquid creeping in, thick and slow, like the probing of an unwanted tongue. The visions came again and again, until my jaw was sore from being clenched so tightly, and I was sweating, even though the ground underneath our tent was hardened with frost. I was so tense that the sounds of my own body felt exaggerated: the passage of air in my nostrils. The sound of skin on skin as I pressed my hands over my eyes and rubbed them.
“It’s not finished,” Xander said, reaching for the paper. “The maze of bones.”
“What are you talking about?” I snapped. “Say what you mean.” I could hear the glint of hysteria in my own words.
Sally moved between us. “Don’t talk to him that way,” she said, and I knew she was right. I looked at him, mouth opening and closing like a fish. And I, more than anyone, knew that he wasn’t trying to be obscure. I knew that his visions had knocked words loose inside his head and that he was scrambling among the wreckage.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and tried to reach for his hand, but Sally blocked my arm, turning her back to me as she soothed Xander.
All night I heard his mutterings and cries, his mangled words being spat from his mouth like broken teeth.
It was my fault, and my future.
Ω
On the third night, after midnight, Simon yanked open our tent flap.
“You need to come, now,” he said. He waited while we rose and threw on our clothes, his swinging lamp tossing agitated shadows on the walls of the tent. Xander was muttering, halfway between waking and sleep, so we left him to rest.
Outside Simon’s tent, a guard was holding a horse, its gray coat dark with sweat, its hot breath steaming into the night air. When Simon entered the tent ahead of us, the woman inside stood hastily, but Simon gestured for her to sit. There were flecks of mud on her face from riding fast through the wet night. She was closer to Simon’s age than Piper’s. Her dark hair was bound back tightly and she had the wiry strength of a life lived hard. Her left wrist finished at a stub, rounded like the end of a loaf of bread.
“Tell them, Violet,” Simon said.
Violet raised an eyebrow. She was looking at Piper and Zoe, and at me.
“I’ve told you already.” Simon pushed his chair and stood. “They can be trusted.”
She spoke, while Simon paced by the door.
“I’ve been north, seeing what we could get out of the soldier that Noah’s crew captured. He was a courier, heading back to New Hobart from one of the southern garrisons. The message he carried wasn’t of particular interest—updates on troop replacements and cargo. But we were able to get more out of him, about New Hobart itself.”
“How?” I interrupted. “Did you torture him?”
Simon glared at me. “We have a job to do. Don’t tell us how to do it.”
Violet ignored us both. “He said they’ve been searching for something,” she said. “Inside New Hobart. Asking about documents.”
“Nothing else?”
“He didn’t know any more than that,” said Violet. “Said only the senior soldiers were privy to the details. But they’ve all had the orders: anything